Debut Biotechnology Secures $2.6 Million In Seed Funding

By Annie Baker ● Jan 15, 2020
  • UC-Irvine spinout Debut Biotechnology announced it has raised $2.6 million in a seed round of funding

Debut Biotechnology, a spinout of UC-Irvine that is advancing scalable cell-free biomanufacturing, announced it has raised $2.6 million in a seed round of funding from several venture capital firms and angel investors. This oversubscribed round was led by KdT Ventures with participation from Better Ventures, FTW Ventures, and SpringTide Ventures.

Debut Bio is known for helping the pharmaceutical and specialty chemical industries manufacture high-value molecules by combining custom-designed immobilized enzymes with continuous biomanufacturing processes. And through the utilization of plug-and-play enzyme cartridges, the company’s cell-free platform has the ability to transform low-value bio-renewable materials into high-value therapeutics and specialty chemicals.

“At our core, we are rethinking industrial biomanufacturing and aiming to produce high-value molecules in better ways. Nature’s enzymes have the ability to create complex natural products, so why reinvent the wheel with chemical synthesis?” said Dr. Joshua Britton, CEO and Founder of Debut Biotechnology. “Enzyme pathways and evolved proteins hold the key.”

Debut Bio’s enzyme cartridges are sequentially arranged in a manner that mimics pathways found in plants and other organisms. And each cartridge is finely-tuned to provide the ideal temperature, pH, concentration, solvent, and reaction time for each individual step to maximize enzymatic productivity and product titer levels. The platform requires much fewer steps than traditional pharma manufacturing and avoids the use of environmentally harmful chemistry. Plus it overcomes many challenges typically associated with relying on cells for biomanufacturing.

“We invested in Debut because the way we produce therapeutics and high-value chemicals will dramatically change in the next 10 years as the pharma industry transitions from complex, multi-step ‘batch manufacturing,’ to a far more cost-effective and efficient continuous manufacturing system,” added Cain McClary, Founder and Managing Partner of KdT Ventures. “Debut Bio will be at the forefront of this shift, which we believe represents one of the most promising opportunities in pharma.”

Dr. Britton explained that bacteria and yeast have been the workhorses of industrial biomanufacturing for years. However, these biofactories have drawbacks, reaction times can be slow, the product and starting material have difficulty passing through the cell wall, and each cell must be reprogrammed to produce a new molecule. Debut Bio is envisioning an alternative route.

With Debut Bio’s system, reactants are passed from one enzyme reactor to another to build in-vitro or “cell-free” biosynthetic pathways. And the company’s platform uses a sustainable approach by leveraging advanced enzymes outside of the cell to maximize performance and avoid issues with cell-based systems. The platform technology operates with a continuous manufacturing regime that will provide scale, consistency, and the ability to produce a biomolecule with the click of a button.

Debut Bio is partnered with two large manufacturers to integrate its platform into their existing pipelines. And the seed funding will be used to support these integrations, expand business development, double the science team, and create a pilot production system.

“We’re humbled to have received both support and validation from world-class, science-focused investors,” commented Brady Beauchamp, COO and Co-Founder of Debut Biotechnology. “We plan to build on this validation in the coming months with our initial customers in the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry.”

The funding also comes following an announcement last year that Debut Bio spun out of UC Irvine with the exclusive license of two inventions developed by Dr. Joshua Britton and Professor Greg Weiss.